Back to Winning - Election Strategy

Alwyn Deacon, our newly appointed National Elections Officer started the 2012 British National Party conference 2012 with a very clear lecture on how he intends to get back to winning elections.

The key points of his lecture are below.

There is no quick fix, just hard work, methodical, targeted smart work.To get BACK TO WINNING we need to start NOW!

Start now for next May’s County Council elections.

TARGETING: We must target if we are to win. Choose your target ward-1 ward in each area and start work now.

Each target ward needs a newsletter/leaflet at least once a month. The generic party literature is fine but a local newsletter is also required.

We need to get candidates in place now – not next April, the candidate needs to start working the target ward and the local unit must have the discipline to stick to the target ward.

They need to start attending local council meetings; resident’s association meetings and they need to start writing to local papers, getting their name and face known.

The whole group needs to work on finding the local issues; our publicity department needs your info from the actual ward, LOCAL ISSUES MATTER TO LOCAL PEOPLE, get involved in the community,
We need good quality photos of candidates NOW, today in fact, please make sure everyone gets their picture taken today by our professional photographer, and a very good 250 words about the candidate. All these things can and should be prepared as early as possible.

Each group/branch needs to get a new electoral register in December and ask for monthly updates, and keep the register updated monthly.

Ask me about this process after the conference and I will issue you the paperwork and advise you on the data management of the registers.

There should be as many paper candidates as possible; this is mainly to spread the anti BNP brigade, therefore diverting their efforts away from the target ward. We should also monitor these wards to see what a vote we get.

We need to get people signed up to postal votes; we need to harvest these people. We should always make sure we offer to sign them up to postal votes on every leaflet we put out.
We need to get more people trained to do simple mail merges, and canvass sheets, when leafleting activist need to stop and talk to residents, find out what their concerns are and take note and always make sure if they support us keep them on file, a VoF through their door regularly.

Activists should always be smart and polite when out leafleting, even under pressure and if taking abuse stay polite; you don’t know who is watching or listening, no swearing.
Candidates should always be on the streets when activism is taking place,

We need to show the voters that we are there all the time and not just at election times.

Our leaflets need to be good quality, we should all focus on positives about the party and not the negatives, and there also should be a return box on the leaflet.

The simple steps above are enough for now, the exact election campaigns will be rolled out in precise detail at the organisers and activists conference in January, but I say it again, next year’s election must be won NOW. Only by following the steps outlined here today will you put your team into a winning position.

The long term plans and constant target work detailed above WILL WORK – is proven to work – there really is no quick fix, or magic bullet, we know what to do, we even know how to do it, but it is up to each and every person in this room to make the decision here and now that they want to GET BACK TO WINNING because no one can win these elections for you.

You must win the elections yourselves but with our help.

Basically my message is we will get BACK TO WINNING, we have taken the first steps today, I am here to help you through the process of electioneering from start to finish, so let’s all go away from this conference, energised, with a clear target in mind – GETTING BACK TO WINNING.

Thank you,

Alwyn Deacon

PS: In your conference letter this week you had a sample of all our new leaflets, the A5 are only £15 per 1,000 plus Postage and Packaging, the A4 are only £25 per 1,000, you can buy these with group, branch or regional funds.

The “Out of the EU” Nick Griffin MEP leaflets ARE FREE so no one has any excuse at all not to get out into your target wards and start your first round of leafleting right away.

See me over the weekend as we have a full stock of literature here at the conference.

Every serious activist or group must be ordering regular literature and also we have the Voice of Freedom newspaper so please make sure your local group orders the paper every month.

Everyone attending your local meetings should be sold the VoF and local “paper rounds” should be built up in the target wards.